1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to fax forwarding and more particularly to a method and apparatus for remote fax forwarding control.
2. Description of the Related Art
Despite the prevalence of the Internet and e-mail, fax transmission has remained a dominant method of business communication. While fax technology is relatively inexpensive and widely available, a user often needs access to information when on the road or away from the office or home where his facsimile machine is located. In an effort to address this concern, certain standalone facsimile machines have provided a capability to forward faxes to a dedicated phone number of another facsimile machine. This capability is generally termed xe2x80x9cfax forwarding.xe2x80x9d
The ease of use and functionality of fax forwarding by facsimile machines has been fairly limited. One limitation is that it has been necessary to activate or deactivate fax forwarding at the particular facsimile machine. Therefore, if a user leaves the location of the facsimile machine and forgets to activate fax forwarding, then the user lacks an ability to activate fax forwarding when it is most needed. A further limitation is that a facsimile machine may only forward a fax to another facsimile machine. In other words, there is no provision in a facsimile machine for directly forwarding a fax to an email account. As a result, it is very difficult (if at all possible) for a user to gain access to a fax while away from the location of the facsimile machine.
In addition to facsimile machines, there are fax-to-email and email-to-fax services that provide fax forwarding. This type of service generally involves sending a fax to a local or long distance number and automatically forwarding the fax to an email account. Similarly, there are fax server solutions that enable faxes to be transmitted and received like e-mail messages. An email-to-fax service or fax server, though, does not allow for faxing a physical document. Therefore, a user cannot sign a physical document and then fax the signed document through either an email-to-fax service or a fax server solution.
Briefly, a facsimile machine provides firmware to remotely activate and deactivate fax forwarding. The firmware enables a user to remotely activate or deactivate fax forwarding through an email, a fax, or a telephone. The facsimile machine may be set by the user to activate and deactivate fax forwarding at a predetermined activation time and a predetermined deactivation time. If fax forwarding with local printing is activated, the facsimile machine locally prints a fax after the fax is forwarded. The facsimile machine may be a multifunctional peripheral.